MikeC

Once again, thank you. I will try these and things and see if I can get them to work.

Thank you. Having asked that, how do I figure out how to set the industry percentages in a city to make sure something appears, e.g. a weapons factory? Can I get townhouses to appear in cities the way you did with your US History map?

... to see this group still active. I have been away for two (or three?) years. Not from RRT2, but from this site. As always, I find myself in need of a leg-up. I have FINALLY jumped (fallen?) into the map-design pool. I keep seeing references to a file named EDITOR.TXT but don't seem to be able to find it. After posting this, I will look on the downloads tab, with fingers crossed. I guess my actual question is this: does that file exist? I have only found editor2.txt and editor3.txt in the GOG download. I also have the RRT2 Platinum CD ... somewhere. Thanks in advance. I look forward to resuming some conversations with y'all.

Thanks, jeffryfisher. I smiled at your reply to #3. I'm the same way, although sometimes the map is difficult enough that getting (for example) five loads of gravel delivered in a single year is tough (maybe if I get myself into the 20th C!). I should have asked: I've been telling the strikers to pound sand (so to speak) but haven't gone far enough into the scenario yet due to my other failures to find out if that's a bad plan. I figure giving in is going to simply yield more strikes, but then, I second-guess myself. One of these days, I'm going to start doing a map, as I intended to do twenty years ago (a bigger CA map, which by definition will include NV, given the odd shape CA forms on a rectangular map). I've been inspired. I cringed, though, at re-starting (and then did it anyway). I considered demolishing trains, too, and simply rebuilding new ones as a means to unclogging the two dreadful bottlenecks. Gave that idea up, though (sort of). The old map is still saved, "just in case"... I'm also getting over my lust for long-haul trains, I might add. The city-pair model yields many earnings-per-year advantages (but not the big paychecks, but also not the big risks from robbery). Of course, western Canada makes certain long-haul demands that other regions can ignore. OK... Back to playing instead of simply nattering on.

Can't believe it's been four months since my last post. I thought I knew RRT2 well, and maybe I did compared to most players, but I know it better much now than four months ago. Thanks to those who helped. Now the new questions... 🙁 1) When I played this map the first time, I saw townhouses when cities grew (I never saw them in any previous game). I replaced the .EXE after I last posted on this thread and played this map again--and this time I am not even sure cities are growing, but there are certainly no townhouses. (I have seen towns go from not wanting anything other than goods or supporting commodities to wanting people, mail, etc., so I guess some growth must be taking place.) Thoughts? 2) I have read the threads about town growth and about micromanaging. I fear I have succumbed to the latter; I bring up the former in this bullet to highlight my zeal for taking care of--that is, serving--every market I can see (I'm getting over that). I guess the main problem is that I now have a couple of serious bottlenecks, but with 350+ trains, it almost seems faster to ... sigh ... start over than do unravel the existing web. (It now takes as much as eight hours to complete a single year.) Thoughts? Also, does anyone have additional comments about what commodities really make towns grow (one would suspect lumber and food, but... ??)? 3) Serving up excess logs to drive down maintenance costs seems like a no-brainer, so I do it. But over-serving iron to suppress rail costs seems like a red herring. Am I missing something? I wonder the same about oil-diesel and gravel/concrete, but haven't made it that far yet... ☹️ Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. I'm looking forward to getting to the 20th C. Also, any tips on traps lying in wait in said 20th C. would be appreciated.

Do your differently named stations, e.g. XXX Junction as opposed to XXX, cover fewer houses than the generically named stations? (Just checking that I read you right.) I do know that if I have two stations covering the same space, both stations lose passengers (works the same for mail) when I send them on a train, unless one station covers a house that the other does not, and then the passenger may remain. For example, I currently have a "Chicago" and "Chicago Junction" station in the US History map. Chicago has one house that Chicago Junction does not. If I ship passengers or mail from C, the count at CJ will go down for sure. If I ship passengers or mail from CJ, C may not go down the same number. That said, I have never seen the phenomenon you describe, at least not to the point that I noticed it. It does seem to me that there is a multiplier based on economic level--more passengers and mail in boom times than depression, for example. Plus, of course, the game's penchant for dropping a ton of outgoing mail every year or so, regardless of town size (Abilene in 175 having two passengers and two mails at the same time exceeds the "book value" of the two houses it has--more noticeable for big cities).

Oops... Just saw this. I have been playing the unpatched Platinum CD version. That could make a difference in what shows below. As I wrote yesterday, but messed up in posting: More details on my previous post. The year 1899 saw a strike (the third and I rode it out), so my salary was cut commensurate with declining revenue and profits (expected). Dividends set at 0.00 (i.e., none at all). My personal cash went from 1,355,820K in 1/1899 to 1,383,358K in 1/1900. That's a 27,538K increase with no dividends. Interest received in the company was slightly north of 16,000K (which should have no effect on my cash at all). I'm confused, and am sure I missed something [answered already; thank you]. I love this map (and have spent as much as four or five hours playing a single year), but at this rate, I'll "blow up" the scenario (get more than $2B cash) real soon [end yesterday's text]. [Following written today.] Thanks for the help, jeffreyfisher. I played 1890 today. The SpAm War showed in a sub-headline when McKinley was elected. I am now, however, lowest on the net-worth totem pole, showing a -$2B+ net worth ($700M+ stock value plus $1.4B+ cash). I fear I may have to re-start...

I have finished 1898. I have more than $1.3B in cash. I stopped the dividends so as not to create an overflow, but my cash is increasing by more than $1M per year. What am I missing? Wealth tax? Was that a mechanism to overcome the lack of corporate income-taxes in the game? In any case, I own my railroad outright and have effectively neutered my AI opponents. But what lies ahead? It was depressing playing through a three-to-four year depression (though I loved the interest payments), so I am hardly looking forward to the Great Depression (my dad telling me about it growing up was depressing enough, back when it was just "the depression"). Also, my war industries never fired up, and the SpAm War never happened, not even in the papers.

Do you mean, for example, trying to build a track through the Sierra Nevadas? Those trains never get anywhere in my world, and are ludicrous to run.

I've had mixed experiences with what you describe (I usually play on 100+% difficulty). I think it may have to do with where the lumber is shipped, meaning if you sell it at stations with a 5+ demand, your lumber company will make more money. That said, other industries, especially food, seem to do well no matter how low the demand for (in this example) food goes in target cities. Maybe not always to "gushing cash" status forever, but certainly lucrative-to-very-lucrative levels.

Re: the US History map: it is in fact epic. Play it. I have been playing it since downloading several weeks ago, and am only up to 1890.

kill723, I mentioned hex editors only in the context that I could follow directions in using one to change something. As for what I had hoped might be possible, I wanted to add buildings and other resources for an agribusiness map I've contemplated. I have also wondered about such things as changing the passage of time (so that a map/scenario might have more playing time in a limited historical interval). Both of these things can be done in the Civ games (I still play Civ III, mostly because I love the isometric view, odd though that may sound) and since Sid Meier is the brain behind both, I just wondered... I have found the changed-footprint-for-stations thread, for example, and will read more closely (RL demands a lot of my attention right about now). Fascinating stuff, but also for context, I am a retired history professor who is unafraid of hex editors (and possibly should be), as opposed to whatever the opposite of that is... 🙂 To borrow freely, a man has to know his limitations, and I know mine. I'm looking forward to seeing if that thread is over my head. jeffryfisher, I used to demand that my students use precise language, because (quoting myself) "word-choice matters," and also because my mentor demanded it of me. I'm glad he didn't see me fail to do the same in this instance, and I should have done a better job describing what I was after. Modding of course is a different matter than map-building. Both intrigue me, though.

Sad. Truly sad. But thanks for your quick reply, Silverback. I checked the mod links prior to posting but saw less than I had hoped for (hence the opening of this thread). I also saw jeffryfisher's threads and will study those closely--if nothing else, I can play a patched-beyond-the-publisher's-support version of the game. Still trying to get my head around the port-fixing thread, though... At least I recall how to use a hex-editor, though. I think... 🙂

Greetings. Borrowing from Dr. Johnny Fever, "Is anybody out there?" Yes, I know that gives away my age (and then some). Historian and former code-grinder (meaning I got paid for/made a living doing them both), but my tech skills have shriveled. I blundered onto this site and was pleased to find recent postings, having played the game for twenty years (albeit in addition to some others as well). Yesterday, I replied to a multi-player thread as a guest. Will that show up eventually, or do I have to repeat it now that I have an account on this forum? I plan to create a map (which in older days I'd have called a scenario) since it seems the chance of someone else playing it is not zero. Therefore, I need to examine all the compiled material on modding. I can do this the brute-force way, but time is always precious, and becomes more so each day that passes. Can anyone point me to not only rich threads for modding information beyond the user-guide, but maybe some "watch out for XXX pitfalls" thread-types? I know the standard social-media answer is "do it the hard way n00b." Hoping not so here. Thanks in advance for reading...